


It doesn't feel that way any more.

by lytefoot



Series: Summer of '98 [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Dramatic Haircut, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hugs, No Plot/Plotless, allusion to parental death, if you wanted to, scanty dress as a metaphor for emotional vulnerability, understated reactions to trauma, you could read this as harry/luna
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 15:44:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15343098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lytefoot/pseuds/lytefoot
Summary: This is a story about a haircut.In which Luna needs a hug and Harry is careful with combs.





	It doesn't feel that way any more.

Harry followed the trail of water down the stairs to the back sitting room. It was nice, not being the only one roaming the house at 2:37 in the morning, but he wondered why the water trail. He’d stared at the ceiling for what felt like a good twenty minutes after the shower turned off, before he’d given up on sleep and checked the time.

The trail led him to the back sitting room, where Luna was sitting in the middle of the floor, cross-legged, head down, wearing these tiny little shorts and a tank top, all pale limbs folded in on themselves. She’d put down a sheet, and her hair was scattered over it, soaking wet. She’d cut it off, clumsily, unevenly, the long stretch of the back of her neck looking oddly exposed. Her shoulders were shaking.

Not sure if this was a moment he ought to walk in on, Harry knocked on the door frame. She went still. “Luna?”

“Oh, hello, Harry.” Her voice was deliberately light. She didn’t look back at him. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“I was awake.” He wondered if he should ask why, but honestly, it was her business. Instead, “Can I help you with that? I can see the back of your head, that might make it easier.”

Now she did glance back at him. There were tears on her face, her eyes red, cheeks rough. The ghostly half-smile she offered him was surprised. “Would you?” she offered him a pair of scissors. He came to sit behind her. The sheet was drenched from the wet hair. “There’s a comb in there, somewhere.” She waved at the scattered locks. “It got stuck.”

Harry took the scissors, a pair she must have found in the house somewhere. They were ancient, and neither as tight nor as sharp as they might have been. He hit them with a _reparo_ —they’d been quite nice when new, it appeared—and tried to summon the comb, which got him smacked in the face by a clump of wet hair. He worked the comb out of the knot, gently, set the hair aside. The comb was one of the fine-toothed ones that Aunt Petunia had spent years breaking on his hair. Hermione had slipped him one of the other sort when she came back from Christmas their first year, and it had changed his life.

Luna had just the hair for this comb, though, soft and fine and slippery. He started carefully working on the last of the knots sleep had left on the back of her head. “So I should warn you I’ve never actually cut anyone’s hair before,” Harry told her, conversationally. “It might be smarter to wait and have Ginny do it in the morning.”

“Ginny doesn’t want me to do this,” Luna admitted, softly. “She likes long hair.”

“She won’t let me cut mine, either,” Harry agreed. Not that he was complaining. If Ginny liked his hair, he was going to be grateful for it. He stopped at the first real tangle he’d found, worked it carefully apart with his fingers. “But it’s not Ginny’s hair, you know? You can cut it if you want to.” He’d worked the knot out, stroked his fingers across the back of her head, looking for anything else that needed attention before he came back with the comb. She sighed, leaned into his touch.

“I’ve never had hair this short,” Luna said, after a moment. “It was always long. When I was small, my mother used to come sit on my bed with me at night, and comb it out and braid it, and we’d talk. It was our special time.” It sounded lovely. Harry was quiet, let her talk. “After she was gone, it always made me remember how much she loved me. I’d brush my hair and think of my mother when I was feeling lonely.” Her voice went choked at the end. Very quietly, “I miss her.”

“I know.” He never knew what to say. “Me, too.” Her hair got so smooth, properly combed out, fine as silk. It felt like it was going to curl a lot more when it had dried, though. Harry held his tongue, looked at the shape her hair made against her head. He’d just even it out, and they’d see how it looked in the morning. Finally, he had to say something, as he clipped a long, errant lock. “What changed?”

Luna took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, sat for a moment. “The dungeon,” she said, eventually. “It got… you saw.” He had seen. Luna had been a mess, when they arrived at Shell Cottage, hair knotted with dirt and grease and blood. “Fleur helped me with it, once Hermione and Griphook were settled. We would never have managed without charms. It would have been so much easier if I’d just cut it then. But I didn’t want to give it up.”

Yes, there was definitely a loose curl to Luna’s hair, now that it was shorter. Harry tried to follow it as he cut, so that it would look natural, soft, not too blunt. “But now you do,” he prompted, after a long silence broken only by the sound of scissors.

“Now, I… it isn’t really a question of giving it up. It doesn’t feel that way any more.” Another deep breath, this one held for a moment and released shakily. “I can’t get it to feel clean. And every time I find a knot, the walls start closing in. I just… wanted it gone.”

Harry set the scissors aside for a moment, wrapped his arms around her waist, pressed his face into the warmth between her neck and shoulder. There wasn’t anything to say, but it at least made him feel better to hold her. She pressed back into him, her arms wrapped over his, and a little of the tension went out of her shoulders, so maybe it helped her, too.

They sat like that for a while, then Luna spoke again, in an almost normal voice. “Well, it’s gone now. Thank you for helping me, Harry.”

“Yeah.” He let her go, ran his fingers through her hair experimentally, clipped a few stray threads. “I can’t promise it’s any good, but it’s even, at least?”

“Thank you,” she said again, slid away from him, stood, stretched. “ _Oh_ that feels odd,” she said, rolling her neck. She offered him a hand up, accepted the comb and scissors from him, set them on the mantle. “Harry? Are you attached to this sheet?”

Harry glanced at it. It was a plain white one, not even embroidered with the Black crest. “No.”

“Good.” She was bundling the corners together, gathering the wet ash-blond tangles in the cloth. “Let’s go out to the garden.”

He followed her down and out, barefoot in their pajamas. It was balmy outside, with just a hint of a cool breeze. Halfway down the stairs, she’d reached back and caught his hand, led him by it. Her fingers were soft and warm.

Outside, she laid out the sheet, hair piled in the middle, catching the fading moonlight even as the July sun was pinking the horizon. She took another deep breath. “Could I borrow your wand? I’ve left mine upstairs.”

Harry didn’t object—Luna doubtless knew more about wands than he did. It also occurred to him that Luna’s magic was more like his than Hermione’s could ever be. Handing his wand to her felt oddly intimate, an expression of trust, but that was all right. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as he handed it over, and she didn’t shrug it off, leaned into him.

They stood together like that while she held an _incendio_ on the pile of hair until it burned, soaking wet or not. They watched the flames leap while the pink in the east brightened and took on streaks of white, watched until all that was let was a small pile of ash and the scorched corners of the sheet, watched as the flames died away and went out. Harry looked at the fire and not at Luna’s face. He didn’t think she wanted him to see the tears.


End file.
